The London Kurdish Film Festival (LKKF) will be 10 this year. Writing in Yeni Ozgur Politika, Erem Kansoy gave details of this new edition which will open this Friday 13 April to close on the 22nd.

Among the films screened will be the long awaited documentary “The Legend of the Bad King”, about great Kurdish film director, Yilmaz Güney and a film about the genocidal attacks agains the Yezidi community, “A Yezidi Girl against ISIS”.

The festival will be shown in three venues: the Vue Woodgreen Cinema, the Rio Cinema and the SOAS University.

Remembering Mehmet Aksoy

The documentary section award will be dedicated to Mehmet Aksoy, the young kurdish video maker from London who lost his life in Raqqa, last year. Aksoy had gone to Raqqa to join the YPG/YPJ and FDS press centre to inform the world about the liberation of the so called “capital” of the Islamic State. Aksoy lost his life when the DAESH attacked the media centre.

To remember Aksoy the festival will present two films, one called “Friends of Mehmet” and an unfinished film by Mehmet himself, called “G olmak”. The young director begun this film in 2010 but did not finish it.

9 days 44 films

The Festival this year will screen a total of 44 films, in different sections: 10 feature films, 12 documentaries and 22 short films. Speaking about the festival, its director Ferhat Sterk said that “many film directors are coming from both Europe and Kurdistan to join an event which has become a point of reference when it comes to Kurdish cinema”.

Remembering the huge work done since the first edition of the festival, in 2001, Sterk confirmed that “we are organising such an important event with an army of volunteer, to secure everything is done professionally and to meet the expectations, not just of the loyal Kurdish audience, who still makes up most of the audience of this festival, but also to keep attracting more and more non-kurdish viewers”.

Steak underlined that “London and the UK are offering a great range of cultural events and film festivals, and we are proud to see our festival considered as one of the awaited appointment for cinema lovers and kurdish culture lovers”.